1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a document processing apparatus, a document processing method, and a computer-executable program. More particularly, the present invention relates to a document processing apparatus, a document processing method, and a computer-executable program, which are useful for restricting transmission of a document depending on a destination.
2. Description of the Related Art
To prevent illegal copying or leakage of a document, a copy-forgery-inhibited pattern, a digital watermarking, or the like can be applied to the document to achieve restriction of access to the document.
When the document is in an electronic form, operations available for a user such as viewing or editing can be controlled by checking each user's right to access the document.
In recent years, a document can be scanned with an image forming apparatus and the scanned data can be transmitted in an electronic form via a network.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-205661 discusses a method in which, when a hard copy of a document is produced, copy-protection information is embedded in the hard copy. Such copy-protection information includes information on the document or on an image forming apparatus that produces the hard copy.
According to this method, when copying the hard copy, the image forming apparatus analyzes the copy-protection information embedded in the hard copy. The image forming apparatus determines whether the hard copy is permitted to be copied according to a result of the analysis. In this way, illegal copying can be prevented. For example, based on the copy-protection information, the image forming apparatus determines whether the hard copy is permitted to be copied for use exclusively in house.
As described above, the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-205661 can limit an image forming apparatus or a user that can produce a copy by utilizing copy-protection information.
However, according to the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-205661, since copying is restricted according to a relationship between an image forming apparatus which produces copy and a document which is to be copied, it is difficult to control a destination of the document when the document is transmitted using the image forming apparatus.